


Dancing on the Head of a Pin

by KaworubytheSea



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Depression, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Horror, Psychological Trauma, Romance, Suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2015-12-08
Packaged: 2018-04-07 09:49:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4258800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaworubytheSea/pseuds/KaworubytheSea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A young boy arrives in Tokyo-3 a few weeks ahead of schedule. He finds another boy and they love each other. </p>
<p>And the world crumbles beneath them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prelude: A True Believer's View

_It is not because angels are holier than men or devils that makes them angels, but because they do not expect holiness from one another, but from God alone._  
-William Blake, A Vision of the Last Judgment

 _If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia._  
-Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

Street preachers and cultists of the world, rejoice! The end of the world has come. As if the scouring of Antarctica and the whole Southern Hemisphere was not enough to convince you, the messengers of God, the ANGELS of Abrahamic writ, have descended to our humble plane.

The people of the earth all united to see our sacred visitors. We gathered round our screens, thinking that this was a movie made real. We saw the images of the wide-eyed visitors treading in our cities, and we gaped unknowing at what we witnessed.

For the Angels of the Lord have shown their true countenance to Man, and their forms were many-winged and spindle-necked, insectoid nightmares of clacking limbs and dripping jaws. The Holy Ones sought to wipe us clean from the earth as we would a nest of insects, reducing our cities to black and red smears and smoking craters, and they burn our tender flesh till it pops and smokes like roast pork and the charred skeletons crumble into dust at the next gust of wind.

Our flaming spears, nuclear ballistic missiles, were all launched to smite them, but that only irradiated the ground and mutated extra limbs on newborn babes. The cities of the earth all burned away or sank under the ocean dyed red, the buildings crumbling into fine grey dust which cut apart your lungs, and loose papers fell down like rain. The cities are now heaps of molten steel, and the cathedrals of the old world have returned to their past existence as a heap of unhewn stones.

We, in our measured panic, burrowed into the earth like blind moles and built fortresses of steel and concrete under the dirt. We became undomesticated animals once again, climbing down our evolutionary trees and building new cities under the ruins of the old. But still some higher function of humanity returned to the fore within us. For it is not in humanity’s nature to retreat when faced with violence or extinction. Instead we have learned to adapt and inflict violence in return, as is our tendency and our birthright.

The surviving nations of the world produced giant machine-men, EVAs, ready to smash the invaders with their fists and unfeeling knives. Our machinery will triumph over the vermin. So many of them have already been smashed into pieces, their blood now speckled on the sides of buildings and their guts dissected. It is our time now, as it always has been.

But there is another story yet to be told here within this chaos, one of the last angel and the last man. You may yet doubt their return until the angel has risen from the dead himself and shown you his shining face and the wounds and the air passing through and his veins pinched. But his love is shining and eternal, and there are none now left who doubt it. For we have made one of the alien gods in our own image, and he is now our savior. Look at this burden he now bears.


	2. Chapter 2

_As a Father hath compassion on his children, so hath the Lord compassion on those who fear him._  
-Psalms 103:13, GNV

  
A lone jet roars. It draws a thin trail across the clear and cloudless sky. It circles around the clear and concrete fields of the distant airport and lands without ceremony.  
  
The passengers climb down the exit ladder and move to a line of black vehicles waiting for them. They pass into the countryside, overrun and wild. The road is cracked and grass grows in it, and wild deer wander in the fields.  
  
The convoy comes to the edge of civilization. The police have set up a cordon and stopped every traveler going in or out, but these they let through without hesitation after the driver shows his papers. They know better than to interfere.  
  
The city, though battered many times by its invaders, clings to life with a quiet dignity. A small crowd pushes an overturned bus off the road. The shopkeepers clean up the broken glass and beat the dust off the _noren ___. It is quiet here – only the sound of the wind between the buildings and a lone cough. There are no other cars aside from these. The locals stop and stare. A few might resent whoever gets to drive a car, but they also know not to show it. Somewhere, a stray dog barks.  
  
They arrive at a new facility, one that resembles an oversized subway station. Guards stand in front of it, not paying attention. These wear tan uniforms, not the light blue of the police. A further layer of control within the city. Standing at the gate is a man with a thin beard wearing an unbuttoned uniform jacket. He stands stiff and commanding, like he was to be bathed in molten steel and a statue made of him. Though he has no scars on his face, the thick sunglasses make it look as though he was a blind man. This is Gendo Ikari.  
  
The caravan stops there, and a few bland men in uniforms get out and salute the man in charge. He does not bother to return the salute, but only accepts the respect paid to him. One last person steps out, the smallest of them all, and the rest turn to look at him as he raises his head.  
  
He is pale and thin, with clouded red eyes which slide back and forth in a constant searching spasm. His hair, white as an old man’s, is a tangle of uncombed fluff. His face is clear, his cheeks sunk, his chin a tapered point. His skin is almost translucent, stretched over his ribs. His limbs are thin and delicate, and look as though you could break the bones over your knee. He wears a schoolboy’s old uniform, a shapeless hand-me-down, with a black jacket over a starched white shirt, too big pants and old shoes. A blue duffel bag is slung across his shoulder with all his worldly possessions in it. The sun is too bright for him. He squints and holds a hand over his eyes, unconsciously imitating the military precision of those around him.  
  
Gendo leans over to the officer in charge of the convoy. He speaks in a low conspiratorial voice. “That’s him?”  
  
“Yes, sir. Delivered ahead of schedule.” Gendo looks at Kaworu from top to bottom, inspecting him, like a shopkeeper seeing his new merchandise.  
  
“Well done. We’ll take it from here. You can go now.” The military escorts salute and vanish into the background.  
  
“Mr. Nagisa.” He does not extends his hand, nor does he bow.  
  
“Commander Ikari, sir.”  
  
“You look exhausted.”  
  
Kaworu looks Gendo right in the eye. Don’t show disrespect.  
  
“I was travelling for a long time. Thirteen hours from Germany, sir.”  
  
“I see. Well you won’t need to worry about that for a while. We need you here.”  
  
“Thank you, sir.”  
  
“Don’t call me sir.”  
  
Kaworu has a twinge of embarrassment. Misjudgment.  
  
A brief pause, made too long by anxiety. “It is…” Gendo checks his watch. “5:30. I dine every day at 6 with one of the other pilots. Would you care to join us?”  
  
“Of course, Mr. Ikari. I would be honored.”  
  
“Good. After that we’ll have you moved in.”  
  


========================================================================================  
  
The ‘office’ is too grandiose to be called that. This space is vast and empty, a cathedral of light. Fifty or a hundred worshippers would have enough room to be left alone here, but there are only three diners in one corner.  
  
Kaworu and Gendo are there, and one other. She wears a schoolgirl’s uniform, with ribbon and plain shoes. She has light blue hair - Kaworu’s looks the same under the light. When he sees her, he feels uncomfortable and he cannot understand why.  
  
There is a brown lump on Kaworu’s plate next to the rice and cabbage. He does not recognize it. He leans to it and breathes in the unusual scent, and sits up right in his chair. He prods it with his fork.  
  
Gendo almost lets the shadow of a smile on his face at this. “You’re very perceptive. You can tell something is not right with it.”  
  
“Excuse me, sir?”  
  
“It’s synthetic meat. Lab-grown. Saves us a lot of time and resources instead of using livestock.” He holds up a square piece with his fork. Kaworu tears off a little piece with his teeth and swallows immediately to avoid tasting it. He nods while chewing instead of trying to lie about how it tastes. Gendo goes back to eating and there is another moment of uncertain silence. The clock on the desk ticks uncomfortably loud.  
  
“You went to school in Germany?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“What did you learn?”  
  
Kaworu thinks for a moment, rolls his eyes up to the ceiling as he remembers.  
  
“I was taught chemistry, biology, and some psychology. I can do some mathematics and I can speak some Japanese and English because they brought in personnel the other bases. I also picked up a few things on my own. ”  
  
“Your Japanese is good. You’re near the college level in reading German, but learning the kanji will be more difficult. So. Were you taught with others or alone?”  
  
“Oh no, it was only me. I had private tutors. ”  
  
“That won’t do. You’ll be enrolled in the same school as the other pilots. The socialization will be good for you. Were there any other pilots in Germany with you?”  
  
“No. At least, none that I knew about.”  
  
A barely perceptible frown.  
  
“That’s bad. I think it would be best for you to live with the others. You should learn from them what it’s like to pilot EVA. We need you in top condition.”  
  
“But – if you insist on living alone, you may do so. Like Rei.” He gestures at her.  
  
“She is a pilot, too, and a capable one. I think it would be good if the two of you were able to talk about your experiences.”  
  
She is obviously as uncomfortable as Kaworu is. It is as though praise is something rare and rationed thing for her – and also to meet someone who is almost her exact physical double.  
  
“But not today, unfortunately. I’m leaving with her tomorrow afternoon. We have important business elsewhere.”  
  
Kaworu nods. “I see. In any case, I’d like that very much.”  
  
Kaworu’s gaze slides down his plate and he says nothing. He takes an extra drink of water and tries to draw it out so he has an excuse not to talk.  
  
“Wait a moment.”  
  
Gendo looks at Kaworu with a knowing look, like he knew some terrible secret and he wanted Kaworu to confess it. His jaw shifts as he grinds his teeth together. Kaworu tries to keep himself from showing any emotion. Just like he was taught. Keep your face blank, they won’t find anything to attack you with. He looks in Gendo's eyes, or tries to. He sees only his reflection in the lenses.  
  
Gendo glances towards Rei, then back to Kaworu. He wipes his face with his napkin.  
  
“No. It is nothing worth saying. You should get some rest. Your first sync test is tomorrow.” Kaworu unclenches his hands when he leaves and sees the crescent moons he has dug into his hand. He will ascend back to the land of the other living.  
========================================================================================  
  
It is dark out, but not that dark. The fireflies are still out in the grass and the crescent moon will grow brighter. It is still fall, there is some warmth left. One window is lit in in the corner apartment. He approaches the door with a steady gait. He hears the sound of laughter and conversation inside. He hesitates for a second, and raps on the door three times.  
  
The conversation inside stops. One of the muffled voices asks a question which Kaworu cannot hear, and he hears rapid footsteps before the door swings open.  
  
There are three people at the door. The first is an older woman with messy black hair and her face tinted red from beer, her shirt opened to let out the heat. The second is a young girl, his age and height, with her hands on her hips. The third is another boy his age, with his hands folded, smiling coyly at him. but his eyes conceal some hidden sorrow.  
  
Kaworu looks at each of them in turn and then he speaks. “Hello, everyone. I’m Kaworu Nagisa. It is good to meet you.”  
  
He crosses the boundary.  
========================================================================================  
  
“Fuyutsuki!”  
  
“Yes, sir.” Gendo’s old assistant and foil walks in with a weary face. He sees his commander with an open file on his desk, with a clean dossier and a photo of Kaworu’s face on the top corner.  
  
“What do you think of our new arrival?”  
  
A short pause while he demurrs. “He resembles Ayanami.”  
  
“Exactly. I’m concerned that someone in Germany has stolen our techniques or perhaps our DNA samples. We’ll need to perform tests.”  
  
“Shall I have Dr. Akagi do it, sir?”  
  
“Yes. But only her. This is a core secret, and we’ll speak of it to no one else. We have DNA samples from his hair and the napkin he used at dinner – that should be enough to start with. Anything else we can arrange for as part of a ‘regular physical’ or ‘calibration tests’.”  
  
“Yes, sir.”  
  
“If he is a spy, we'll have him isolated and wrung out of every fight he can muster. I don't want anyone getting too close to him.”  
  
"Of course, sir."  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew! An actual chapter. Enjoy, readers. 
> 
> To those asking, a _noren_ is a sort of curtain which is hung above windows or doors in traditional Japanese shops.


	3. Chapter 3

_When the child was a child, it didn't know it was a child. Everything was full of life, and all life was one._

-Damiel, Der Himmel Über Berlin

The first one to break the silence was Asuka. She laughs, almost in shock.

“ _Mein Gott!_ There are two of them! The first doll was already enough to deal with, but now we have two of them!” Her incredulous smile fades to a look of distrust, a raised eyebrow and a commanding sneer. “I thought the report said you were German. _Sprechen Sie auf Deutsch? Verstehen Sie mich?_ ”

Kaworu looks at her, with an emotionless look plastered to his face. “ _Ja, Ich verstehe Sie. Ich bin in Deutschland gebornen.”_

Asuka smiles. Only with her mouth, and with ice still in her eyes. “ _Und sind Sie auch eine Puppe?”_

_“Ich verstehe die Frage nicht.”_

Misato, knowing no German, realizes something is wrong. She stumbles in between the two of them, trying not to slur her words. 

“Now, now, you two. Let’s not all speak in German for the entire time. We need to introduce ourselves and get to know each other. OK? I know I’ve already made dinner but I can get some snacks and we can sit around the table and introduce ourselves.”

She turns to Kaworu and notices his duffel bag. “Maybe we can help you settle in. You’ll be sleeping w- in Shinji’s room, of course. Shinji, you can help him unpack, and Asuka can be with me in the kitchen and we can whip something up quick.”

Shinji says “Hi.” He raises his hand to wave, then puts it down. He still doesn’t know what to do with it. He points to his room in an awkward gesture, and says, “OK. Let’s go.”

Shinji’s bedroom is already the smallest, and there’s only just enough room for another person here. Still, it is neat and tidy, with nothing scattered on the floor and his school things lined neatly on the desk. He even makes his bed. 

There’s little of Kaworu’s to unpack. Three sets of school uniforms, a few scattered t-shirts and pants, only a few pairs of socks. A few weathered books in German. While Kaworu puts away his folded shirts, Shinji picks up a book and tries to read the spine. Even if he could read the language, he couldn’t make out the title, with the gold leaf picked away. He puts these aside and finds a glasses case, an orange peel, a few folded pieces of sheet music and an MP3 player.

“You play an instrument, Kaworu?”

“I play the piano. I enjoy it very much, though I could not bring it with me.” Kaworu looks at Shinji, and does not seem to mind at all he’s going through his belongings. “Do you play an instrument?”

“No. I don’t pl– I play the cello.”

“Is that so? Do you like it?”

“I suppose I do. I just never really stopped.”

Kaworu looks stunned at this, almost. “How so?”

“I started playing when I was very young. It was my foster parents’ idea. It can be a good distraction from when I’m sad or tired.”

Kaworu nods in affirmation. “That’s good. Music can be an escape from one’s troubles, and a way to experience something more.” Shinji is not sure what to make of this, so Kaworu presses on. “What can you play on it?”

“A few short pieces. I don’t remember all the names.”

“I’d like to hear them.”

“A lot of people say that. “

“Then you must sound good.”

Shinji looks away, unsure what to make of this. Kaworu presses it further. “I know some wonderful duets we could play together. I could show them to you later.”

Shinji gets the strength to look Kaworu in the eye again. “Yes, that would be good.”

They work in silence for a few minutes and the packing is soon done. Shinji takes a seat on the bed, and Kaworu immediately joins him. Shinji is startled to see someone so close but he doesn’t flinch or move away.

“How many other pilots are there, Shinji?”

“Well, there’s Rei.”

“I have met her.”

“And Asuka, and me. And now there’s you.”

“And now there’s me. What is being an Eva pilot like, Shinji?”

“It’s all right, I guess. I mean…”  
Kaworu tilts his head and leans in. Shinji breathes out.

“It’s… it’s a lot of responsibility.” He makes eye contact briefly, but he still can’t look for too long.  
“I can’t feel like I can talk to anybody about it. A lot of things have changed so much recently that I don’t know where to begin.”

“How so?”

“Well… My dad always asks a lot of things of me.”

“Commander Ikari.”

“Yes. Him. But I mean… it’s become better recently. I’m getting better at it. I almost feel confident in what I’m doing now.”

“That’s good. That’s very comforting to hear, Shinji. It is a relief to hear that.”

A cry comes through the door. “OK! Dinner’s ready!”

“I would like to hear more about this. You have many interesting things to say, Shinji.”

The ‘home-cooked food’ was above average for Misato’s standards - instant ramen with egg yolk, seasoning, and warmed-up leftover chicken stirred into it. Asuka had no luck in talking her out of cooking with boiling water, but at least she made sure Misato didn’t spill anything or trip over her own feet. She also digs up a bag of shrimp chips, looks for the expiration date and privately thanks God that Misato bought them some time in the past year. 

Kaworu takes his seat. He folds his hands and says “Itadakimasu”, and Misato giggles at his politeness.

“Heeeeeh. So well-mannered.”

Asuka rolls her eyes and starts eating the shrimp chips. Misato asks him a few questions after he’s taken a few spoonfuls.

“What’s your sync rate? Can you pilot?”

“I’ve performed well in tests. But piloting EVA at all – to say nothing of combat - that remains to be seen.”

Asuka repeats this, with a darkly humorous tone in her voice. “It remains to be … seen.”

Kaworu nods at her. “Yes. You all of course have experience in piloting, and I do not. Of course actual piloting is the best thing I can do, but I can always learn from others’ experience.”

Asuka again smiles, but this time with less open aggression. “Well. If you’re trying to flatter me, keep it up.”

Kaworu takes large spoonfuls from the bowl. He doesn’t even let the food rest on his tongue or get any sense of the flavor, he just gulps it down.  

Misato looks at him with a pursed frown. The beer isn’t making her giddy anymore, just blunt. “You know, that’s the first time I’ve ever had anyone eat anything I’ve made that quickly and seem to enjoy it. Are you all right, Kaworu?”

Kaworu puts the spoon down in a nearly empty bowl.

“Oh yes. I’m fine.”

Misato inspects him, more carefully, with a military eye.

“What exactly have they been feeding you over there?”

Kaworu cleans his hands and stands up.

“Thank you again for the food. I appreciate that you took the effort to make something for me.”

Kaworu stands up and returns to Shinji’s room. He has changed into his sleeping clothes, a plain t-shirt and boxers, when Shinji arrives. He sits cross-legged on the floor.  

“I think I should sleep on the floor.”

“Oh, no, you’re our guest! You should get the bed.”

“Shinji, I thank you. You are very kind. But you live here, so you stay in the bed. I’ll sleep on the floor.”

Shinji pulls out his spare sheets from the closet, and Kaworu arranges them on an empty spot next to the bed. They wash up, and Kaworu falls asleep immediately. He’s curled up on the floor, on top of the covers.

It is only one day, but Shinji feels a faint glimmer towards his new roommate. He listens to him snoring and mumbling in his sleep.  Maybe he can live with Kaworu. 

* * *

 

On Sunday morning, Kaworu is sent on a harried tour of the facility. He is shown the important rooms and descends into each new layer without fear. There is no rest on Sundays. There is always something to do.

He sees footage of the previous attacks. The military is weak, their guns are impotent, the civilians are miniature, cowering in bunkers and dashing through the streets. The clips themselves are impassive and chilling, with the monsters shown in their titanic fury.  But all of them are smashed, mutilated, destroyed, with a slow inevitability. The officer giving the presentation makes a dramatic speech for Kaworu’s behalf. “You are fighting against the enemies of humanity. ” The whole talk is supposed to embolden him with a renewed purpose. There is only a thin line between them and the extermination of human life. Misato has heard all these stories before, and she toys with her cell phone under the table.  

Then follows a battery of tests and medical examinations. Dr. Akagi has so good a bedside manner that all of this doesn’t feel so dehumanizing, if only for a little while. Put this under your tongue. Thirty seven degrees. Let me swab here. You’ll feel a pinch. Her breath stinks of cigarettes. All right, now put this around your arm. Squeeze. 100 over 75, that’s good. Go into this office here. Fill out these papers and answer the questions on pages 3 through 5.  I will show you these pictures, tell me what you see.

All this culminates in the first sync test, with its own organized rituals. First the disinfection, where he strips and goes through chemical showers, airlocks, ultraviolet light. He feels processed. His nose is now singed with the sickly-sweet smell of chemical cleaners.  The plugsuit is too tight. The sweat sticks to him inside it. He feels compressed and thin in it, encased, overheated, and the technicians with goggles over their eyes look at him, through him. He hears them talking, he hears his name, and he does not understand why. 

He sees the Eva Unit itself, 00. He first realizes its size, how it towers over him. It looks vaguely human, but not quite. It has one enormous red eye instead of two, a green glass dome on the top of its skull, fins sticking from the tops of its arms, its armor is a garish blue and white. Clearly there’s no interest in camouflage with something this size. But this is Rei’s Unit, not his. His will arrive in a few days, but this will do for now.  

Misato, almost out of nowhere, claps a hand on his shoulder. “You ready?”

“I feel nervous. But I think I will start the test anyway.”

“That’s the spirit. I just have one last question for the pre-test check-up.”

“Of course. “

“What language do you want for the thought configuration – German or Japanese?”

“Japanese.”

“OK, we’ll do that. Don’t want any mix-ups like last month. Good luck, Kaworu.”

He smiles and gives her a thumbs-up. He enters the plug, ducking his head so he doesn’t hit the door frame.

“Insert entry plug!”

“Direct hydro-transmission system connection ready!”

“Plug fixed.”

The technicians continue their checks as he prepares himself. LCL floods the cockpit. He feels the  warm metallic taste of blood – the LCL - in his mouth. He’s done this before. Clear the mind of all extraneous thought. Imagine the horizon and focus upon it. He feels the light flash behind his eyes. The connection goes into him now – right at the top of the spine at the vulnerable spot on the back of his neck. Do not panic. Concentrate. Feel as the unit feels. Feel the air upon its skin, feel the metal beneath its feet. Absorb it, take it in to you. Breathe. Breathe. Doesn’t matter if its fluid now. Breathe. 

Misato’s voice crackles on the radio. “Your sync rate is at 50.0%. That’s amazing for a first activation in a new plug. Are you feeling all right in there?”

He nods, with a warm smile. “All is well.”

Another voice now. Gendo’s. “Good. We can now implement the new testing protocol.”

Misato now. “New protocol?”

“New orders. We’re trying a new combination of chemical supplements to the LCL and combat programming to increase your sync rate.”

“Why him? There are already other experienced pilots to use for data. And his sync rate is already excellent for a first-time pilot. ”

“No, they asked for him specifically. They wanted to compare it to his test data before.”

Kaworu shrugs. “Let’s begin.”

“Activate Protocol M.”

He feels nothing yet. Breathe. Breathe.

“More.”

His eyes sharpen. He focuses on some distant point. A fog is lifting from his mind. Breathe faster.

“Well, we’re seeing a definite increase. In the last 90 seconds he’s gone from 55% to 70%.”

“No, wait, 80.0%! Sir! This is amazing!”

“We should be careful. We don’t want to lose him.”

“Continue the Protocol. We have a few more minutes remaining in the test.”

Kaworu feels a tightening in his throat, a quickening in his chest. He taps on his radio. “I don’t feel right. I feel…”

He hears Misato talk to the technicians. “What are his vitals?”

“His heart rate is spiking! “

“Sync rate at 103%!”

His hands and body tremble. He looks straight ahead.

“Should we cut off the connection?” “No. Keep going. We have 2 minutes and 30 seconds left in the test.”

His eyes roll up into the top of his head. His mouth gapes open. He loses control of himself. He feels a noise like a buzzing insect in his head, except far too loud, too loud, too loud, a series of hammer blows at the top of his skull, he feels himself being torn apart. His limbs tremble. He feels his chest being crushed. A loud cry escapes him, incoherent, a sound of a wounded animal.

The sound cuts out. They see him scream and shake but there is no noise. The Eva Unit moves, perhaps on its own, and it breaks the restraints. It smashes its fists into its skull. Its fingers twist into claws and it scratches, trying to peel off its own face, pull out its eyes. Its knees buckle, and it falls to the ground with a thunderous crash. 

Kaworu does nothing now, he thinks nothing, he can only hear the cries of those around as he spasms. “Help him!” “Help him!” “We have to eject right now or we lose him!” “Do it.” “Heart rate now at 200 bpm!” “We have a spike on all brain frequencies!” “Condition White. Repeat, Condition White. Get an EMT group to Testing Room 1, now! Begin emergency shutdown. Eject the plug. Do it! On my mark.”

He lurches forwards as the plug is shot backward out of the Eva. Somewhere he hears the sound of running shoes on metal.

He coughs. Bile and vomit rise in his throat but he gulps it down.  Misato slings his arm over her shoulder and helps him up. He cannot even walk, his legs dangle in the air as she carries him. The ceiling lights swirl and dart above him as he is taken away.

He falls asleep before he even changes out of his clothes. He curls up on top of the blankets, the LCL billowing out on the bedsheets beneath him.

 

* * *

When he wakes up, the sun has gone down. The hospital staff has decided it’s time for him to go home. When he comes back on the train he sees Misato is already leaving, and Kaji with her. Asuka sees them off with a barely disguised look of longing.

When she sees Kaworu has arrived, she puts on another face, a wide confident smile. She places her hands on her hips and thrusts out her chest.

“Well they’re going off to their wedding so it’s just the three of us. You, the new doll, Shinji, the little boy, and me. So. I’m bored. I have an idea.”

She walks towards Shinji with a predatory look and grabs the lapels of his shirt.

“I’m going to kiss you, Shinji. The doll here can just watch.”

“Wait – what are y-”

Asuka dashes forward and pinches Shinji’s nose. He gasps for air and she slams her mouth into his. They stand there for what seems like minutes, locked together. Like a violent chemical reaction, they jump apart, and Shinji is gasping for breath.

“Ugh. That was …”

Kaworu sees Asuka running to the bathroom and hears her spitting in the sink. Shinji looks at Kaworu with shock and runs back to his room and slams the door. He would like to talk to both. He turns his head to the bathroom and back to Shinji’s room a few times, then goes to Shinji’s room. He sees Shinji in a ball on the bed, with his eyebrows nearly up to his bangs in shock. 

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah. I think. Maybe.”

“Well. That was a … surprise. I wasn’t expecting it. It was…”

Shinji turns crimson, looks to his side to avoid the humiliation of further eye contact.

“She ambushed me! I felt like I was going to burn up!”

“I noticed. You turned bright red.”

“Kaworu! Stop iiiit! You’re teasing me.”

“Oh, Shinji. I’m sorry.”

A short pause. Shinji returns to his normal color, but Kaworu is still studying his reactions.

“I don’t think she was bored.”

“No?”

“I think she just wanted to kiss you. And that she needed an excuse.”

“Me? No. She’s had a crush on Kaji for weeks.  Why would she kiss me?”

Kaworu shrugs.

Shinji takes a moment to look at Kaworu’s face. He wears an all-embracing smile, with little wrinkles near the eyes, he feels as though he is not being pitied, but as though Kaworu wants to hold him closer and listen to him.

“Anyway. Um. Kaworu. How are you doing? I heard you had a rough day after the sync test.”

“I’m feeling better than I was.”

“Do you know what happened?”

“No. I don’t even remember any of it.”

“Ahhh. That must have been painful. At least you weren’t fighting an angel like the first time I was in one.”

Kaworu smiles. “That’s true.”

Another pause. Kaworu looks up at the ceiling, and stretches his arms out behind him. 

“Hey, Kaworu. We have a couple hours to ourselves and I don’t think Asuka is coming out again. Not after… all that. Maybe we could watch a movie?”

“Yes. I would like that very much. I'll make us something to eat."

Kaworu goes to the kitchen and finds a bag of microwave popcorn and boils two cups of green tea. He listens carefully for any signs of Asuka but her room is locked up tight and he hears nothing. He pours the popcorn into two smaller bowls and steeps the tea. When he returns, Shinji is flipping through TV channels. He finds an older black and white movie, one about forbidden love, a trapeze artist, and the skies over a distant city. They watch it in silence, with Kaworu staring at the screen, obsessed. He licks the filmy butter off his hands after eating the popcorn, like a cat to its paws. 

Near the end, he faces Shinji and asks, “Do people really do such things?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do people hold each other like that? Do they treat each other like that?”

“Well. Yes."

"And do they also do such awful things to each other? Was that one really so sad that he would treat himself like that? That he would give up everything?"

"Yes. But this is a movie, and it’s not real.”

“It’s not.”

“But it’s based on reality.”

“So there’s something real in it. And people really do feel that. And the part where the angel and the young man-"

"Yes. But we've seen angels and we know they don't look like that."

Kaworu looks at the blankets on the floor, already a messy pile. Shinji looks at Kaworu’s face, but he can read nothing from it.

“I would like to sleep with you tonight.”

“Wait, what? Oh no, not you too!”

“What do you mean, ‘oh no’? I just want to sleep with you.”

“Kaworu, do you know what you’re even saying?”

“Yes, I do. I would like to sleep _with_ you. On the bed.”

“Wait. That’s it? Just sleep?”

“Yes. Sleep.”

“Oh. Well! This is still very sudden.”

“It is?”

“Yeah. Don’t you know about these things? How people are supposed to behave?”

“No. Not at all.”

Shinji’s expression changes from anger to melancholy, almost pity. “Kaworu, somehow I believe you.” He exhales through his nose.

“So that means no.”

“Well. I’m still not sure what you want.”

Kaworu folds his hands together and looks down.

“It means…” This almost in a whisper. “It means that I’d like to spend more time with you and get to know you, but I don’t know how.”

Shinji looks at him, with a sad yet welcome smile on his face.

“Yes. I’d like that too.”

* * *

Soon after, they are in the (surprisingly spacious) bed. There's a space of a few inches between them, but they're both on their backs, and chatting away. Shinji is telling stories about his early childhood and his first days in school, of long summers by the river and under the trees in the mountains when nothing mattered and Kaworu is listening to them and looking at him with a dog's wide eyes. 

"I have a question for you, Shinji."

"Yeah?"

"You said you met Rei earlier. The other pilot. What do you think of her?"

Kaworu rests his head in his arms and crosses his legs. Shinji still gazes up at the ceiling.

"She ... she was a mystery to me at first. She always acted so distant to the other kids in class. Asuka calls her a doll, as you might have heard. She didn't ever raise her voice, she tried not to show anything on her face. But she has feelings, like you and I do. She just hides them."

"How so?"

Shinji lets out a long sigh. "Well, earlier this morning, I was helping her out in the kitchen before we went to our morning sync tests. She was cutting up some food for our lunches, and I thought she was really skilled at it."

"Like the chef I saw on TV."

"Well, no. Not that fast, but just very delicate. Like she was careful to get all the pieces just right. And, for some reason, it reminded me of my mother. One of the things I remember about her."

"So you told her that she reminds you of your mother?"

"What? No! No. That's not... No. I just told her that it was ... motherly. And I could see her as that one day."

"And what did she say?"

"She blushed. And said thank you. And called me Ikari- _kun_."

"And you didn't have to kiss her to make her blush, Shinji."

"Hey! What do you- I-" But it was too late. Shinji is already laughing, and Kaworu covers his mouth and giggles.

"Yeah. I just see her as a person, though. She can be very warm and caring, and she seems to like being with us more. I hope to see more of that."

Kaworu rests his face on his arm and twists his body towards Shinji.

“You are a truly kind person, Shinji Ikari.”

“What do you mean?”

“You can understand very easily how another person feels. You can understand emotions and good intentions and you want to nurture them. And I like that in you.”

“…Thank you.”

By this point, it is already late into the night. Shinji soon falls asleep. Kaworu lies there and thinks - of Rei, of Shinji's mother, of hidden feelings. He hears the little even breaths from Shinji’s nose, and sees the gentle rise and fall of his chest, and feels the soft flutter of his own heartbeat.  His thoughts slow into a tired haze. He wants this feeling of warmth to go on.  

In the later hours of the night, when midnight is long past, Misato stumbles back, dead-eyed, her high heels in her hand. She opens the door a crack and sees the pair together, their tangled feet poking out of the covers. She looks at them, and she thinks about how she kissed Kaji that night, and how she talked and mimicked a smile at the wedding, and feels a pain of remembering the past and the little nothings she has said and done and the intimacy she once felt with people who are now strangers, and she wonders if she ever was that young.

* * *

 

That night, Gendo has a meeting with SEELE.

He almost raises his voice. “What would you have us do? That protocol nearly killed your new pilot and damaged Unit-00 during his first sync test. You know we do not need any setbacks in case of further attack.”

“We hold no responsibility for the pilot since he is now in your custody. We have no record of any extraneous incidents with him, and we cannot compensate you for any negligence.”

”So what do you want us to do about it?”

“Nothing. Except what we have ordered. We have already changed our schedule. We have only allowed your request for an additional pilot because the scrolls allowed us to do so. There will be no further accommodations for you.”

“I see. Then we have nothing further to discuss.”

The lights dim as the screens go dark, one by one. Gendo calls for Fuyutsuki with a finger on the buzzer.  

“Cut off camera access to the conference room. Cut off any external access to computer networks. I don’t want to hear from these old men. We do no more tests for SEELE. Fabricate the results if we must, use old data, whatever.”

“They will retaliate as soon as they find out, sir.”

“No doubt they will. Their spies are growing too brazen.”

“Are you referring to who I think you are?”

“Yes, him too. We’ll have to liquidate any internal threats as well.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off - I have not provided any translations for the German, to give you the feeling that you don’t know what’s going on. You should be able to understand everything in Google Translate. If you’re a native speaker who wants to correct me, please do so.
> 
> And I know, I know, I gave Kaworu a couple of Asuka’s lines from Episode 15. I assure you he’s not just here to replace her. She gets her own story too, I promise. I know it’s a bad tendency for all the female characters to get sidelined in any M/M story but they should get something important too. Especially for a story like Evangelion where everybody is so fleshed out. Especially Asuka.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew! Excuse the long wait on this one. Grad school intervened. But I finished this chapter in procrastination. Enjoy.

_Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that He sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they cannot be seen._  
-Stephen Hawking, The Nature of Space and Time  


_Chamber confinement results in a significant increase in contact clinging between animals and a decrease in locomotion following removal from the apparatus._  
-Harry Harlow  


A faint and tinny pop song floats through the air. It is a cool afternoon in the crowded grocery store, and the two boys walk in wearing thin shirts and flip-flops. The song brushes against something in the dim recesses of Shinji’s memory, and for once he feels comfortable with this pang of remembering the past. Kaworu, however, is not lost within himself. He stops for a moment, walks around the front rows of the store near the registers and back towards the aisles. He sees the stacked rows of multicolor boxes. He gazes at them, almost in wonder, shocked to see so many things in one place. Dozens of flavors of potato chips, each in bright crinkled packaging. He touches a sweet potato with his hands, wondering whether it was real. A few aisles over, he sees twenty kinds of toothpaste, with each one claiming to the best, and he is not sure which to believe. Perhaps them all.  


Kaworu picks goods almost at random, carrying each can with the tips of his fingers and placing it in their cart with delicacy. A tin of crackers, canned peaches, tinned fish, daikon, ginger, cabbage. Shinji is gentle, but insistent, and sometimes puts things back instead of trying to disagree. The trip takes much longer than it should, with this whirligig game of Kaworu putting things in and Shinji taking them back.  


After Shinji returns from the cleaning supplies aisle with sprays in hand, he realizes Kaworu has fallen behind. Now he has stopped in the rows of fish in their square tanks. He holds his face almost up to the glass, watching the little spots of color dart out of their miniature plastic castles.  


“Shinji, we should get one of these. We can bring it home and take care of it.”  


"Kaworu, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”  


“Why not, Shinji?”  


“Well, we already have Pen-Pen. He’s a good pet. And he would just eat all the fish anyway.”  


“Ah, I see.”  


Shinji leads them to the cash register and pulls out his ration booklet and arranges the goods for sale. The clerk stamps it and hands it back. They’re about to leave, and Shinji snaps his fingers.  


“Oh, Kaworu, I forgot to get milk. Could you wait here for a minute?”  


“Of course, Shinji.”  


Kaworu waits outside the automatic doors, shivering a touch from the blasts of air coming in and out. His gaze wanders to papers tacked onto on the walls. New ones appear after every attack, all on the same days. This one has ‘MISSING PERSON!’ stamped on it in bold red letters. The oldest ones date from July, but the ink from the pictures is smeared and faded after the rain, streaming off the page in grey rivulets. Kaworu reads them all. This one of a 12-year-old schoolgirl and this one of a businessman and this one of a three-year-old child, and this one of an entire family – two parents and one child – all missing after their apartment block caved in. He reaches out to touch one, and traces his fingers around the edge of the blurred portrait, of a face distorted beyond recognition.  


He hears footsteps behind him, with Shinji carrying two bottles. “OK, I’m done! Are you ready?”  


“Yes, of course, Shinji.” He takes the heaviest bags of groceries and they walk.  


They go past the gas station on the way to the train. The sign in front says 485- no, it’s ticked up to 508 yen a liter. A throng of people mutters outside the little shop, ready to set down their gas cans and take up firebombs. The streets are vast and empty and most just walk in the middle of it or ride their bicycles. They walk together in silence for a few minutes before Kaworu again starts the conversation.  


“The city is quiet. I’ve never seen a place so empty except in pictures.”  


“Yeah. A lot of people have already left.”  


“Do you think they will all come back?”  


“Maybe. When it they think it will be safe.”  


“That will be soon, I hope.”  


* * *

“We’re home!”  


“Welcome back.” Misato calls from the living room.  


They set the bags down with a sigh and pull out the groceries to put away. Asuka is rooting around in the kitchen, thrusting her hands in and out of the cupboards.  


“Hello, Asuka.”  


She nods at them in reply.  


“We found that fish stock you wanted.”  


She unravels the coiled receipt out of the bag and inspects it line by line. “What is this? You know we could have got more. We have the special rationing account because of our military rank. You know food prices are spiking again and need to get things now before they get worse later. Tomorrow we’ll need bigger sacks of rice and more canned food.”  


“OK. I understand.”  


“What’s this?” She holds up a can of pineapples and thrusts it at Shinji’s face, barely touching the tip of his nose with it.  


“Oh, uh.” His eyes focus on it. “I must have missed that. I think that was Kaworu’s idea.”  


And she faces him now, holding the can just out of his reach.  


“And why exactly did you buy this?”  


“I didn’t know what they were.”  


“If you bought everything you didn’t know about, we’d be broke.”  


Silence. She takes a look at the can herself, with a clean unpicked label, PRODUCT OF THAILAND.  


“Well. I can’t blame him. I thought these had disappeared completely. Somehow you managed to get us a windfall by accident. I’m impressed.”  


Kaworu smiles again. “Thank you, Asuka.”  


She smiles back, this time with almost a faint shadow of happiness in her eyes. “Don’t mention it.”  


* * *

They return to their work for a few more minutes. Kaworu places everything in neat rows, with all the labels facing outward. When Shinji stashes the plastic bags under the sunk, he bumps into Asuka’s legs again. An curse slips from her mouth – “Scheiss-” and she almost drops the cup into the sink, catching it and spilling tea dregs on her fingers.  


“Oh, Asuka! I’m sorry.”  


“Watch it, Shinji. Don’t do that again.  


“Sorry, Asuka.”  


“And stop apologizing so much. ”  


“Sorry.”  


Asuka sighs in exasperation, her breaths rattling as a clatter of bones. “See? He’s doing it again.” She looks at him, tilts her head over like a predatory bird. “Why are you like this? Do you fear being punished that much?”  


Kaworu answers for him. “It could be a learned behavior. Maybe there was a time when a minor error could have been punished so severely.”  


Asuka looks at him with scorn, her lip twisting in disgust. “Look at you. Making excuses for him. You don’t even know him that well.”  


“Perhaps. But I’m listing a possibility.”  


“Possibilities aren’t reasons. You’re still making an excuse.”  


“Perhaps there was a time that somebody did mistreat him for minor tasks?”  


“So what if somebody yelled at him for not doing the dishes right or whatever? I’m not running away from it. Besides, you’re an Eva pilot – you should know that there is no room for minor mistakes. Not a single one. You hesitate a little and,” here she makes a pistol with the fingers of her left hand and points it at Shinji’s head, “gone. Just like that. You simply can’t let yourself slip.”  


“I did not know doing the dishes was such a dangerous task.”  


Misato snickers in the background, but she turns away and pretends not to pay attention while she’s on the phone. Asuka glances at her, but walks towards Kaworu with grim determination, pressing her finger on his chest with each word. He looks down at it, and looks her in the eye as though he was made of stone.  


“You’re humoring me. But this isn’t funny, not a bit. It’s not about the dishes. It’s about being vigilant. Look around you. You see a dying city and one-quarter of humanity dead and you’re joking around with me. We have a mission and we cannot hesitate in any part of it. Everything we do matters.”  


She folds her arms and steps back. She speaks in a low, steady voice, cold as sharpened steel.  


“ _Haben Sie Kant gelesen haben?”_  


“ _Wenig._ ”  


“ _Wir haben ein Imperativ. Wir bekämpfen die Engel, oder sie uns töten. Wir beide wissen das, auch wenn Sie kann nicht sagen.”_  


Kaworu says nothing. His face turns blank and cold as a mannequin’s, and Asuka refuses to turn away or blink.  


Another burst of laughter from the couch. Misato is telling Kaji some little anecdote about her time in college and Asuka looks at her with a predatory glance.  


“I’ll speak to you again later.”  


Asuka stomps over to the living room and leans over Misato on the couch. Shinji takes this moment to step closer.  


“Kaworu?”  


“Yes, Shinji.”  


“I think we should go.”  


He nods, and follows Shinji to their bedroom. Shinji closes and locks the door behind them with trembling hands. He lets out a long sigh.  


“What was all that about?”  


“Hm?”  


“With Asuka. What did she tell you?”  


“Just the same kind of things she said to you.”  


Shinji wipes the beaded sweat from his forehead, wipes his hand on his shirt.  


“Asuka really has been harsh to you, hasn’t she?”  


“Not as much as she has been to you.”  


Shinji’s eyes are wide and worried. “Although now she’s even been criticizing Misato too.”  


They hear muffled conversation outside. They strain to hear it but they can’t make out any words, just long monologues from Asuka.  


“Kaworu, listen to that. Does she even know how we live?”  


No answer. He cranes his delicate neck, places his ear against the wall, but still cannot hear them.  


“Where does all that come from? How does she ever do anything? She just barges in and yells at us whenever she doesn’t like whatever we do.”  


“She needs to rely on something for support. As all of us do.”  


“I guess. But I’m not sure I can imagine her doing that.”  


Another moment of silence, each caught up in their own thoughts.  


“… Thank you for sticking up for me.”  


“Of course, Shinji. You’re worthy of that.”  


They hear more conversation outside, louder, sharper, but not quite yelling.  


“Should we do something?”  


“She wouldn’t go too far. Misato’s a superior officer. And we have a sync test this afternoon. We should rest ourselves and prepare for that soon.”  


“Yeah. You’re right.”

* * *

And so for the next four hours, all of them go through the tedious preparations and chemical rituals and soon the four of them are enclosed in the metallic womb of their test plugs.  


Kaworu’s forehead twitches with anxiety. Would he lose control of himself again if he went in there? He knows this is true. He remembers the feeling of losing control of his body, of his mind disappearing. But he will withhold it, to avoid causing further panic. For now, he will follow deliberate restraint. He remembers that animal feeling of violence within him yesterday, and he loathes it. He’d rather not give into that feeling. He’d rather hold back. Do not exert any emotion. Ease back from letting it take over. Don’t panic again. Breathe. Float upon the water. He lets himself smile.  


The printer chatters and groans, and Misato tears out the printout with a single smooth gesture. Her eyes go wide at the figures.  
Shinji has placed at his highest sync test ever, with an 81.1%. Kaworu is already reached an impressive 75.0%, just behind Asuka, and Rei is a distant 4th with a 59.3%.  


This, of course, is cause for outrage.  


When Asuka reads the results herself and the test is over, she bursts out with frustration.  


“Second? Second place with 79.7%? This is ridiculous. I should be able to do much better than that.”  


Rei ignores her, or pretends to ignore her, and pays special attention to buttoning up her blouse. Asuka tears up her copy of the report with her fists and throws the pieces aside, leaving them on the locker room floor. She sighs and lets herself take deep breaths. “Verdammt. I’m only barely doing better than the other doll! It’s sickening!”  


Rei hesitates for a second at that feared and hated word, ‘doll’. She doesn’t face Asuka yet, but asks “What is sickening?”  


“The two of them! It’s the worst of sappy, gross, teenage puppy love. Like they’re the heroes in some stupid shonen anime. God, you can just see it from them! And they’re both shoving it in our faces.”  


“You do not like the nature of their relationship.”  


“I don’t like the fact that they _have a relationship!” She turns away and almost shouts the rest of it into her locker. “I’m sick of being left behind by these people and that they’re leaving me in the dust!”  
_

“Goodbye.”  


And Rei, unheard, has walked out and shut the door behind her.  


* * *

“Kaworu?” Misato gestures for Kaworu to come back after the test is done. The other pilots long ago left to change.  


When he arrives, Misato holds her hand up as she finishes a phone call. She is speaking with a wild voice and animated gestures. “I know it’s a multi-trillion yen piece of equipment, but I’d appreciate it if you could tell me why this is being delayed again.” She turns away from Kaworu but her voice is still loud and goes right through him. She knife-hands the air as though the other person was in front of her. “Yes, of course that’s important.” “We could keep going again with only three, but I’d rather not have the additional risk. Yeah. Thanks. Well.” And here she switches to English. “Fuck you too.”  


She slams the receiver down on the desk and sighs, rubbing her temples. She looks up and faces Kaworu with a determined yet weary on her face, and Kaworu looks at her mouth, not the bags round her eyes.  


“I’m sorry you had to see that, Kaworu. I had some bad news about your Eva. They found some trouble with the S2 reactor so it’ll be some more time before you get an Eva to pilot.”  


“How long will it be?”  


“Three more days. We know it’s a quick fix with a spare coil for the S2 reactor but the guy was crawling up my ass about it.” She rolls her eyes.

“It’s OK. I’d rather wait than pilot a defective Eva.”  


“Yeah, don’t you know it. And don’t worry Kaworu. You can contribute soon enough.”  


Misato slings one leg across the other and tries to balance a pen on its tip. Kaworu clasps his hands behind his back and gathers his strength.  


“Major. Can I ask you a question?”  


“About what?”  


“Asuka. How is she doing…?”  


Misato cuts him off with a dismissive wave.  


“Oh, her. Yes. Don’t worry about her. I know what to do.”  


Kaworu nods and lets himself ease up. He takes a long sigh. “May I ask what?”  


"It’s easy. Be direct and honest, and don’t let her think you’re running away from your job. And don’t back down from it either. But it’s most important that you don’t take it too personally. I’ll take care of it if anything gets out of hand.”  


“Because we both know it’s about doing our job.”  


Misato nods. She is focused on balancing the pen on its tip.  


“That will be all, Kaworu.”  


“Yes, Major.”

* * *

“Shinji!”  


“Yes, Kaworu?” His hair is still damp and flattened from the post-test shower.  


“Congratulations on getting first place on the sync test! I think we should celebrate.”  


Shinji looks at Kaworu’s eyes briefly, then his neck, still uncertain how to meet his gaze. “Oh! Yes. I’d like that.”  


“What would you like?”  


“Oh. Well. Maybe we could go that ice cream store near the GeoFront entrance.”  


“Yes. I would like that very much.”  


A small place on a street corner. It’s furnished with old pastel colored seats, and not refurbished in years. The plump older man behind the counter wipes his moustache with his apron. The place was also run by his brother, but he died after Second Impact. Little drawings pinned to the walls, and some photographs. Many of NERV’s staff are enjoying the place, and most haven’t changed out of their uniforms. A few wave to Shinji in recognition. Even with food rationing, these stores always run a brisk business in the unending summer.  


The line passes quickly and they are soon at the counter. “I’ll have a cup of mango sherbet, please.”  


“And what would you like, young man?”  


Kaworu stares at the display with unusual intensity. Finally, he points at the light green and the pink flavors with both hands. “These ones, please.”  


“Pistachio mint and strawberry it is. And would you like a cup or a cone?”  


“A cone, please.”  


He takes it gingerly, with both hands. He is enchanted with it. He watches Shinji take delicate shavings of ice cream with a spoon. Out of impulse, he then bites into his top scoop, his teeth digging into the smooth creamy mass. He swallows, then grimaces as his mouth grows cold and his head throbs.  


“Kaworu, you have brain freeze, don’t you?”  


“Nggh. Yes.” His mouth is open and twisted and his eyes closed tight.  


“Here. Rub the top of your mouth with your tongue. That makes the headaches go away.”  


Kaworu’s mouth tenses up, but soon he breathes out a rattling sigh of relief. “Thank you, Shinji.”  


“You’re welcome, Kaworu. But here. You’re supposed to lick it.”  


He looks at Shinji sticking out the tip of his tongue. It’s … endearing, how he teaches Kaworu like this.  


Kaworu does so, but he’s unpracticed and he presses the cone too close to his face. A little pink speck is on his nose.  


“You missed some.”  


“Oh! Yes.” He dabs at it with his napkin.  


The fan is whirring above them, there is a soft breeze, and the white noise of the other conversations. There is no war here, for only a moment.  


“Let’s go home.”  


“Yes, let’s.”  


* * *

Kaworu and Shinji sit next to each other the train, little specks of streetlight pass through the windows. Some seats ahead, there are some small children, not much younger than Shinji and Kaworu, poing and laughing at them over some unheard joke.  


Shinji looks at them in total shame. His right hand tenses and closes up. He shoves it inside his pocket.  


Kaworu murmurs into his ear. “What’s wrong? Should I talk to them?”  


Shinji says nothing, a string of mumbled words. Kaworu then decides he cannot allow this.  


Kaworu walks over to the boys, and leans over them with his hands in his pockets. Shinji looks down in shame, looks at his feet through the cracks of his hands. He wants to curl up into himself. Shinji can’t hear what Kaworu is saying over the low rumble of the engine, but he dares to look for a second, and he sees them look at Kaworu with reverence. 

Their faces turn from mocking smiles to blankness to desperation. One of them starts to cry. Kaworu raises his hands to calm them down, but nothing can be done now. He places his hand over his mouth in shame, and walks back to Shinji and doesn’t look at him.  


“I’m sorry about that, Shinji. I made it worse. I shouldn’t have-” he stops, his voice a low wavering mutter.  


“What did you do? I hope you didn’t hurt them.”  


“No. At least I didn’t mean to, but I did.”  


Shinji stutters, glances at the children and hears their heaving sobs, then he snaps back to Kaworu. “What did you do?”  


“I just asked them why they did it. And what we had done for them to make fun of us like that.”  


“Oh, Kaworu.”  


Kaworu says nothing. Shinji places his hand around Kaworu’s shoulders and draws him closer. The city lights pass over their faces and Kaworu lets himself fade away into sleep, forces himself to not think about it too deeply.  


“Kaworu.”  


“Yes?”  


“This is our stop.”  


“Yes. Let’s go home. We should go home.”  


"Yes, Shinji." 

* * *

Kaworu stumbles, in that haze between wakefulness and sleep, flops onto the bed, not even bothering to change out of his clothes. Shinji takes the time to wash up and change into his underclothes, and he sees Kaworu sprawled out on the bed, unconscious. He hesitates for a moment, and taps Kaworu on the shoulder. His eyes open delicately, as if they had caught the sunshine. 

"Excuse me. Kaworu. Could you please move over? There's not enough room." 

"Of course, Shinji." He retracts his long and tangled limbs and shifts the weight of his body, and Shinji takes the space next to him. Shinji stares for a moment at the ceiling, and turns to face Kaworu. He sees the delicate white of his eyelashes, and the faint specks on his nose. 

"Kaworu." 

"Yes, Shinji." A mumbled reply. 

"Thank you for today. It was... good." 

"Of course, Shinji." 

“Good night, Kaworu.”  


"Good night, Shinji." 

* * *

In some godless hour of the night, the telephone rings, and Misato answers. Unidentified target advancing, 2.5 km/hr. She rouses the children from their beds, gets them ready to venture forwards. Rei is on her way, Shinji and Asuka are sent off to their units. Kaworu is there, watching as an observer in Central Command, in his plugsuit. Before they are separated, his fingers trace along the top of Shinji’s shoulder and he whispers to him “Good luck. Come back safe.”  


In a moment of inspiration, he asks to be given Misato’s microphone. He speaks to Asuka, _Sind Sie bereit?_  


“ _Ja, ‘türlich! Ich bin der beste._ ”  


_“Viel Glück, Asuka_ ”.  


She gives a thumbs up at him. Misato takes the headset back and returns to the usual mindset of command.  


“Shinji, you take point.”  


“Of course I will! It’s a man’s job.” He gives them a cheery thumbs-up.  


The crew laugh and cheer at this. Misato rolls her eyes.  


Asuka spits out in disgust, “You really are just a pig, you know that?”  


Misato rubs the top of her nose and makes a disgusted noise.  


"I’m glad you’re not like that, Kaworu.” He nods.  


“We have visual contact.”  


A security camera’s feed was enough to find it. They now see the ANGEL approaching.  


What they see is beyond all living comprehension, a series of colored patterns not organic but artificial. It is a spiral, with alternating black and white patterns curving out from the center, darting around in chaotic motion. Without form, and void. It is no static point, but a shimmering wild vision, the transparent glow of migraine headaches and the halo seen by epileptics. It alternates between flashes of light and darkness. The buildings around it seem to melt and buckle. Accompanying it is a fearsome sound, a high screeching roar as the sound of hurricanes. Beneath it is a shadow, darker than the void of night itself, and all that falls under it breaks down and crumbles.  


“Action stations, action stations. Angel identified.”  


“Anything from the MAGI?”  


“Nothing. Just location and direction.”  


“All units, attack. Repeat. All units, attack.”  


“Keep your distance, we don’t know what it can do! Projectile weapons only – no knives!”  


They dash forward, taking their weapons from their arsenals, placing in the magazines with a soft click, a green night-vision halo over their view screen. Nothing. No visual contact. Shinji switches to IR vision. Nothing. They both chase ghosts in the dark.  


He tells Asuka he will take the next sector, and his foot slides – it is caught on something, almost like tar, and the unit shudders in response. He shakes.  


“Oh God! It’s underneath me!” He empties the entire magazine from his pistol, faster, without aiming, and tosses it aside when it clicks ‘empty’.  


“I can’t move my legs! I can’t feel anything there! Somebody help me! Oh Go-”  


His screen cuts out. The EVA reaches out and claws at the edges, digging its fingers into the road, but they both break apart, fingers splitting into pieces and the road cracks and the asphalt bubbles, and there is soon nothing but the roar of the ground caving in and the buildings all falling down and the car alarms screaming.  


Asuka turns and runs, scrabbling away like a wild deer. Her EVA claws its way up a building, its fingers digging onto the floors through broken windows, and its feet bracing against the columns. She shifts over, and stands on the roof of a parking garage, and sees the city beneath her, piteous and small. She leaps away and that building is too consumed, concrete and glass and paper and bodies tumbling into nothing and the shrieks of metal come through the speakers. She hopes that was just metal.  


Misato has not yet broken her trance of command, the adrenaline forcing her to act and move in a realm beyond emotion.  


“Rei! Set up the particle rifle and take the shot!” 15.3 kilometers from your location! Mark 237!” She sweeps the barrel towards it and fires with a burst of light and flame. And the blot disappears, and the round collides with an apartment block and breaks it into fine dust and bits of concrete.  


“Shit….Fall back. I order all EVAs, fall back!” Withdrawal. And the city is empty, with clouds of grey dust in the air and no sound but the sob of the sirens.  


“Now what do we do?” Misato hisses to Akagi.  


“We wait. Not while the EVA still has power left.”  


“Are you going to attack it?”  


“No. Not yet. Not when he’s still in there.”  


Kaworu sees the ready discipline of the control room start to slip. One man holds his head in his hands, a woman pounds her fist on the computer screen. As a last sign, the cord between Unit 01 and the power station breaks, with a loud snap, like the breaking of a bone, or the cracking of an egg. The rest tumbles in and is gone.  


“Oh God,” said Maya.  


And they watch in silence, as the audio feed from the video is gone and the crew just stare, just sit and stare, hands over their mouths.  


* * *

An uneasy silence in the locker room. Asuka and Rei change in silence. One less person will be reporting back to Misato in a few minutes.  


Asuka says, perhaps to Rei, likely to nobody in particular. “Serves the bastard right.”  


Rei, by instinct, leans back and strikes Asuka as hard as she can. The sound of the slap echoes through the damp room, and Asuka tenderly rubs the spot on her cheek  


“Just because you don’t like him doesn’t mean he deserves to die.”  


“No. That had nothing to do with this. He made a misstep, and he-“  


“You don’t mean that. You’re just happy he’s gone.”  


“Listen to me, you bitch, I-“  


“Enough." Misato overheard their little spat, and leans in from the open door. "Both of you stay vigilant.”  


Back to the control room. Dr. Akagi, not even bothering to turn around, speaks to Misato as she approaches. “Well. He’ll lose all motion in 5 minutes. Assuming the EVA isn’t destroyed and the cockpit isn’t breached, there’s still no oxygen source. Wherever he is, he has 16 hours, with a margin of plus or minus two hours.”  


“Major, what do we do now?”  


“Regroup and try again.”  


* * *

In the early predawn hours, a UN Force, soldiers with blue helmets, encircling the angelic void at a safer distance, points the tips of their rifles at it, ready to fire. Most likely they are there to keep the civilian population out, as who would have the irreason or the hubris to shoot into a bottomless pit?  


At 30 minutes past the hour, the command officers of NERV shuffle into a briefing room. Kaworu arrives shortly after, missing the first few minutes of the presentation, trying desperately to focus. He sits in his assigned place, and turns to his right. Shinji’s seat is empty. He’s just gone into the other room, it seems.  


Printouts of Feynman diagrams and the whirling circular readings of a particle chamber, all computed from MAGI. “The angel is approximately 600 meters wide, and 3 nanometers thick. It is comprised of a form of matter not typically seen on earth, with negatively charged particles. We call it the ‘Dirac sea’. We’ve also detected trace amounts of thermal radiation similar in behavior to theoretical Hawking radiation. Meaning that this angel is similar in ‘behavior’ and function to a black hole.  


“Is it even alive?”  


“Its movements were not linear, and not explained by physical patterns. It could be alive, but it’s really nothing like anything else we’ve seen before, even from the angels.”  


“So how do we defeat it?”  


“With an input of enough energy, we could possibly disrupt the forces holding the energy fields together. Burst it.”  


“How do we do that?”  


“We use our N-2 bombs into the gravity well, and using a remote radio signal when they’re at the closest point, we detonate.”  


“How many would you need?”  


“All of them. Every one that’s ready to fire in national arsenal, leaving an almost 1,200 Megaton yield. Even so, we have only a marginal chance this will work, and even less of a chance of pilot recovery, after ionizing effects and the shockwave.  


“The unit will likely survive, because of its own AT-Field. So Kaworu will be the new pilot of Unit 01, and we’ll draw from our reserves for Unit 06. Much of the blast would be contained to within the angel’s mass itself. But as a precaution, we’d also have to evacuate the entire city and everything in a 100-kilometer radius.”  


Gasps of exasperation.  


“Get to your stations. We do our duty.”  


Kaworu takes his time, unsure how to even stand up. Two of the staffers whisper as they step past him.  


“- got to be the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard. Where did she get her-”  


A voice, directed at him. He’s not listening.  


“Kaworu.” It’s Misato.  


She approaches him, with arms at her sides, crouching down and over him. “Kaworu.”  


Kaworu is sitting, eyes cast down, not registering her voice.  


“Look at me.” This in a sterner voice, an order. He does so. His eyes are red and swollen. She places her hand on his shoulder, with a sudden intensity.  


“We will get him back.”  


She says this in a loud and firm voice, trying to project the authority of command.  


“We will get him back. We have to.”  


She walks away to some other business and Kaworu thinks she is just trying to reassure herself. But now he has an idea for what to do.  


Elsewhere, and elsewhen, Shinji still lives in his mechanical cocoon, but he is alone and frightened. The LCL is cloudy. It smells like pool water instead of blood – might be the chlorine. The filtration system is starting to break down.  


He shouts into the dark. “Misato! Ayanami! Ritsuko! Father… Kaworu. I miss you. Please help me. Somebody. Anybody. Please!” No, he thinks. I need to keep still. I don’t want to waste oxygen. He curls up again. He rests his head on the edge of the seat. He makes himself smaller. He cries desperately, and falls unconscious out of exhaustion. He lets sleep take him..

 

* * *

-Am I awake? –How long have I been sleeping? Shinji doesn’t know. He doesn’t dare to look at the time. But it’s not there anymore.  


He is no longer in the Eva. He sees that he is standing on darkened lake, in the lake outside the Geofront, with the trees surrounding it as a wall. The sun is gone, making it look as he stands on an ocean of pitch. Something at the bottom has seized his legs, and he cannot move. Every time he tries, he is stuck further down.  


He sees the child. It is him. It looks like him when he was younger. It is not him.  


-Who are you? Shinji says. What are you doing here?  


It tilts his head at him.  


-I am here to talk to you.  


-What are you? You can’t just leave me here.  


-No. I could. But I won’t, not yet.  


Shinji looks around, desperate to something else, anyone. He only hears and feels the cold wind blowing upon him, and feels the angel’s words – his words – hanging around his neck.  


-I’m alive. You can’t keep me here forever. People care about me.  


-No. We know this isn’t true. You are a lie. You will soon perish. Vanish again into that nothingness which came before you were born.  


-No. Please stop. Don’t do this to me.  


-You cannot hide from it. You cannot deny it. There is no other purpose to any of this, to anything in your life. You must acknowledge this. You do this to avoid further punishment.  


-No! That’s not true at all! They’re all fighting to try and get me. They know. Kaworu will, and Rei, and all the rest!  


It is almost at him now, his own face centimeters from his own, smiling vacantly, an intense gaze with nothing behind the eyes but some crude animal intelligence.  


-They all don’t trust you. None of them ever do. Asuka hates you. You know that she hates you. She wants you to suffer. She wants you to die because she hates that you’re happy. Rei doesn’t have any feelings at all. You know Kaworu is only pretending to get close to you. It is all a lie. No. They are only pretending to like you. You know this. We both know we are always alone. You will have no friends or lovers here. Won’t you talk to me before you die?  


Somewhere, a train roars.  


Kaworu sits alone in a bunk, NERV headquarters. It’s a long way from Misato’s apartment, and a lot smaller. The bed doesn’t even smell right. He buries his nose in the pillow. He is trying not to think, and his mind races past his own reservations.  


What if Shinji is already gone? He’d be alone again, just like how he was before. He found a genuine connection for the first time. He had something.  


What is he feeling? Would it be cold in there? Would there be any light in that lonesome space? Would he still be alive in there? Would it have torn him apart, ripped open his – no. 

Rather not think about that. That would just make it all worse. Don’t think about that. That way is worse. Kaworu rubs his eyes. They sting. Is he crying?  


But Shinji is gone. For now, that is.  


He feels desperately, achingly alone. But he realizes there is perhaps one other he can speak with.  


In some other bunk, a phone calls out into the echoing silence. Rei holds the receiver coated with a thick layer of dust.  


“Yes.”  


“Is this Rei?”  


“Yes.”  


“I need to speak to you about something.”  


“Aren’t you already?”  


Is she joking, or does she just not know? Enough of that.  


“I know you care about Shinji. I do too. I miss him. I miss him only from the brief time we spent together and the conversations we had and I miss him. I want him to come back from wherever he is. And I know you do too. I just want-“ His voice cracks, he tries desperately, keep it together, keep it together, try to stay coherent – “I miss him. I want you to promise me to help bring him back.”  


A long and forbidding pause from the other end of the line. She says, “Yes. I will.” And then a click.  


She places the receiver back in its cradle.  


* * *

Shinji is still in this cocoon. He doesn’t know what time it is anymore, how many hours have passed. The lights go out on the console, one by one. He is far away from the world and will soon sleep forever. He feels the universe itself is dying and all the stars are blinking out. His teeth chatter against themselves. His breath is shallow and rapid.  


“Oh God. I’m so cold.”  


He breathes out, a little stream of bubbles escaping his nose.  


“I’m so tired. Of everything.”  


And the angel appears to him for the last time.  


-There, there. It won’t be so bad. Death isn’t so bad. It is just a way out of this. Just let yourself go. Go into eternity with me.  


His mind and his heart start to slow down, fade out. The saliva bubbles in his throat and rattles. His vision fades, not even black, but just nothing there.  


-Goodbye, Shinji Ikari. It’s been a pleasure.  


Outside, it is T-minus 60 seconds and the planes streak across the sky in ordered lines, laser-targeted above a city on the desperate edge of eternity – as if that would do any good, the for the light itself fell in-  


And the earth trembles, and the pilots lose all direction, and Misato holds the bombers on the line, screaming for them to stop – and the bloody head of EVA tears itself from the sphere, splitting it. Splitting the sphere. It is torn open now, withering away. Its guts ripped out, like mouth vomiting blood. The EVA pushes itself out, head first, eyes sunk its teeth shining with blood. It has emerged from that darkened mass, and its hands now, and it splits it open, tears it apart, and the ruined mass shrivels up into a heap of dried skin and the EVA screams as it kills, and the alien shrieks as it dies. It soon falls away into a mass of black offal and formless sludge.  


* * *

A swirl of light and color, a halo. Shinji Ikari is dragged out of his entry plug, to the sound of human commotion. He’s still and silent. He doesn’t move or stir at all. His eyes are half-opened.  


“Is he dead?”  


No, he’s still breathing. And his pulse is steady.  


“What did it do to him?”  


“Come on. Let’s help him up.” They lift him out of the seat and take him away.  


The EVA has gone through a baptism of blood the womb and returns the water of life. Hoses of water clearing away the dried and cracked offal of the dead angel.  


* * *

It is a dark and lonely corner of the hospital, and Rei and Kaworu walk towards each other from opposite ends of the same corridor, headed towards the same room. They take each others’ measure. He says, “You’re here to see Shinji.”  


She nods her head, “Yes.”  


“I am, too. Let’s go in together.”  


She opens the door, and they pull up some chairs and take seats attending his bedside.  


The hours pass. The steady tick of the clock. A nurse looks him over, and glides out.  


The sleeper wakes. He takes in the grid of the ceiling, glances around.  


“Cold. I’m so cold.” He is curled up on his side, his hands grasping his legs, his face shining with sweat.  


“Shinji. Hey, Shinji. Please talk to me. Are you OK?”  


“No, no, no,” mumbling under his breath, curling up further, as they reach over to him. Asuka is outside, waiting next to the door, and she steps away.  


He turns away from them but they go around to see him again. “Shinji. Please talk to us.”  


Again, there’s nothing.  


“We’re glad you’re back.”  


Shinji turns his head, just a touch, and his eyes turn to look back at them. “Thank you.”  


“Do you want to talk about it?”  


That was the worst thing he could have possibly said. “No. Please. I don’t.” He turns away, brings his knees up, covers his head with his hands.  


Kaworu stops, reeling. There is another moment of silence, and Rei places her hand on Kaworu’s shoulder. Kaworu reaches forward, presses his fingertips against the top of his shoulder, and slowly places them down, fearing any recoil.  


“We are here for you.”  


Another long pause, another feeling of eternity.  


“Thank you.”  


* * *

Misato and Ritsuko sip at their coffee in Ritsuko’s office. Even in their fatigue, they feel relief. But they hesitate to broach the most sensitive of topics. But Misato ventures forth at first.  


“Well, there’s no way to avoid it. We both know it’s like a living thing. And we both know we may lose control of it.”  


“And you know if they find out what we’ve done with Yui and Rei they will never forgive us. But we had to do it.”  


A pause. Only the muffled thrum of the air conditioners and the steady tick of the desk clock.  


“And what about Kaworu?”  


“What about him?”  


“What was that test we had him do?”  


“Exactly what we said it was. A series of measures to improve his sync rate.”  


“Such as?”  


“Once that we won’t attempt to use again and has been permanently scrubbed from our settings. Now that we know.”  


“Well, if you’re going to be evasive, at least let me know this, as Ops Director - it wasn’t because he was incompatible with the Unit? Like with Shinji just last month.”  


“No. He was fine right before. It was only after we started the protocol that the abnormal behavior began.”  


A sigh. “All right. So what do we know about him anyway?”  


“Well, if I knew, it would be classified. But I don’t know. I’m still running the DNA tests on him. I don’t know why Gendo wanted me to use the napkin sample when I just had him spit into a cup during the check-up.”  


Misato laughed. “Typical.”  


“And? Come on, what else do we know?”  


Ritsuko then closes a manila folder stamped GEHEIM! and 绝密! in red and encircled with the brown halo of a coffee cup stain. Does she hide all her closest secrets in plain sight? Or is that another secret, or hiding a further secret that Misato should not even know exists?  


“Well, as you might have guessed, he’s a lot like Rei. They share multiple common gene sequences, including albinism and a non-standard pair 23. But they’re obviously not clones of the same person.”  


“No. He looks similar, but that’s all.”  


“Do you have any idea who his genetic donor might be?”  


“No. And most of the old forensic databases were lost after Second Impact so I can’t do a genomic sequence on him.”  


“Any idea about why they sent him?”  


“Well we could just need another pilot.”  


Misato almost snorts. “And for the real reason?”  


"A spy within our base of operations, or a pilot to control an EVA.”  


To do what?”  


“I can’t help you with that one. But I can keep him on surveillance here if he gets out of line.”  


Misato sighs. “Perhaps, if it is for the best. We can’t let him get to close to anyone.”  
“And what about Shinji? How would he take it?”  
“We’ll deal with that when we get to it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the N2 bomb yield, I used the US B53 nuclear bomb as a comparison. N2 bombs were described as being as powerful as nuclear weapons, but the show didn’t specify which ones. These specific weapons were the most commonly used by the US until 2010 in our timeline, but I’d imagine there would be less of a reason for military drawback after Second impact. This would have been the largest nuclear detonation in history, larger than all nuclear detonations done in human history combined from 1945 to the present (in our timeline).  
> 508 yen per liter is about 3.73 Euros per liter, or $15.52 a gallon.  
> Asuka would have read Kant – she is already at the university level at age 13 and Kant would have been something Challenging and Important enough for her to read. Even though she is stretching the definition of the categorical imperative.  
> And all that stuff about physics and the black hole? I have no goddamn idea if it makes sense. It’s better if we don’t focus on the scientific plausibility of it and instead remember it’s an unearthly abomination.


End file.
